Intent

We come to school, with no particular intention.
In our initial few days at school, we came here because our parents want us to go to school. But within a few days we started coming here because we just enjoy coming here, to play with our friends and do new things and go to new places with them.

Very few of us come to school just to learn to read and write and do math and science. We come here to listen to stories of adventure, to read books that take us into faraway lands, to dig into the sand and clay, to go walking on the long boundary wall, to draw and paint, to play games, to go for picnics, to run up the slide the wrong way and to chat merrily with our friends.

When we go visiting or get visitors, we are sometimes told by the adults we meet that school is a place to learn, a place where we can get educated, that schooling will help us get good jobs that will pay us lots of money, that without an education we will be left with nothing and we will remain poor. Some of us wonder whether this is really true or just propaganda when we see our parents and our grandparents living so happily without a care in the world and without the education and schooling that we are getting.
So really, what is the intention of schooling, learning and education?

• Is it to explore the environment in which we live and to get to know as much about it as we can?

• Is it to understand the connections between different things in life?
• Is it to acquire skills and knowledge that can help us get good jobs and earn lots of money?

• Is it to try and understand ourselves, our emotions and what keeps us ticking?

• Is it a preparation for city life, for work in an office or in the army?

• Is it to learn to be able to fly freely like a bird?

• Is it to be successful in life and make it big and rich?

• Is it to be an intelligent, sensitive, tolerant and empathetic person?

• Is it to become proficient at English, Math and Science and to become a doctor, an engineer, a nurse, a teacher or a soldier?

• Is it to live life with liberal, sensitive, tolerant and respectful world views?

• Is it to learn to question, to be a skeptic, to toss about things before accepting or discarding them?

• Is it to prepare for the future learning from knowledge and past experience or is it to learn to live fully in the present moment?

What is really the purpose of coming to school and getting educated?
We talk about this with our friends sometimes, and get tentative answers too… and invariably return to our work and play joyfully and gleefully…"